“Homer Simpson’s Dumber Brother” Is Back

Former U.S.ambassador Dan Simpson is once again weighing in on the gun issue. Some of you may remember the “modest proposal” he came out with shortly after the VA Tech shootings, and while it does not contain ideas like: The disarmament process would begin after the initial three-month amnesty his proposals are still unacceptable. Perhaps he needs a reminder of just what sort of unintended consequences his anti-gun nuttery might produce . . .

[Foreword by David Codrea: This may make some uncomfortable, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. And after all, it’s just a hypothetical “ping,” but one I believe should be transmitted far and wide.]

“Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Nations and peoples who forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.” — Robert Heinlein

“Hell, let’s just start shooting the bastards. Let’s get this crap over with while I’m still young enough to march in the victory parade down Pennsylvania Avenue.” — An American gun owner, overheard in a Birmingham, Alabama, gun store, 27 April 2007.

Career Foreign Service Officer and former Ambassador Daniel H. Simpson, now slumming in retirement as a member of the Toledo Blade & Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s editorial board, has a modest proposal entitled “The Disarming of America.” Unlike Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” for the Irish poor to alleviate their hunger by eating their children, I think Ambassador Dan is really serious about his. A snippet:

“The disarmament process would begin after the initial three-month amnesty. Special squads of police would be formed and trained to carry out the work. Then, on a random basis to permit no advance warning, city blocks and stretches of suburban and rural areas would be cordoned off and searches carried out in every business, dwelling, and empty building. All firearms would be seized. The owners of weapons found in the searches would be prosecuted: $1,000 and one year in prison for each firearm.

Clearly, since such sweeps could not take place all across the country at the same time. But fairly quickly there would begin to be gun-swept, gun-free areas where there should be no firearms. If there were, those carrying them would be subject to quick confiscation and prosecution. On the streets it would be a question of stop-and-search of anyone, even grandma with her walker, with the same penalties for ‘carrying.'” — The Toledo Blade, Wednesday, April 25, 2007

“In Timore Veritas”?

Not surprisingly the gun rights community has evinced more than a little anger at this brazen proposal for their disarmament and enslavement. David Codrea, whose War On Guns blogspot I greatly admire, has referred to Ambassador Dan as “Homer Simpson’s Dumber Brother.” Certainly Dan Simpson, if he is serious, has got to be one stupid human being not to anticipate the unintended consequences of his declaration, which plays into the worst fears and direst predictions of American gun rights advocates since the 1968 Gun Control Act. Yet, since the DC gun law was struck down by the Federal Appeals Court, the hoplophobes have become more open in their demands: we hear less about “reasonable restrictions” and much more about repealing the Second Amendment. Heck, even here in Alabama we’ve had a proposal (House Bill 600) to register every semi-automatic rifle, pistol and shotgun in private hands in the state. Of course it doesn’t have a snowball’s chance of being passed, but. . . then why introduce it?

The Romans used to say “In vino veritas”, or, “In wine there is truth.” But these folks are not, as near as we can tell, drunk. Perhaps what we are dealing with is “In timor veritas”– In fear there is truth. Cops have been known to inadvertently scare suspects so much that they blurted out their own unintended confessions and perhaps that is what is going on here. The gun grabbers are nervous. The Virginia Tech massacre was supposed to strengthen their legislative hand, yet it is the gunnies who seem the stronger for it now. We didn’t react the old timorous NRA way as they expected us to. Those of us who share the traditional American values of the Founder’s republic– faith, responsibility, opportunity and armed defense of liberty– have finally been pushed to the point that they’ve made us fighting mad. We’ve been pushed to the point where it isWE who are beginning to push back. And with their calls for the repeal of the 2nd Amendment, the gun control crowd is risking not just a push but a punch in the nose.

They look at the massacre and see the need for more regulation, registration and confiscation. We look at the dead innocents, deliberately disarmed and made easy targets in a carefully crafted, firearm-free environment, and blame their big liberal lies and unintended idiocies for the body count. “Gun Free School Zone” is a lie every bit as much as “Arbeit Macht Frei” and every bit as deadly. We see these bright young kids and talented professors who were killed without a hope of self defense, who were killed, indeed, by liberalism itself, and we blame the butchers with immaculate hands who cleared the way for the killer and made it all possible. Yet it is WE, the law-abiding and self-reliant, who are blamed by THEM, the servile toadies of collectivism. Our rising anger is in fact a measure of how close we are coming to a final break in this country between our two competing visions of America. Indeed, if Homer Simpson’s dumber brother is serious, the opening shots of this impending civil war cannot be that far away.

But let us assume that, for the sake of argument and illustration, Ambassador Dan’s proposal is serious. Let us assume that he is presenting us with a fictional fascist future backdrop that we may play like a video game. Let us believe for the moment in the literal word of former Foreign Service Officer Daniel H. Simpson’s proposal yet conjure up our own modest fictional counter-proposal. Like Captain Ramius in “The Hunt for Red October,” Ambassador Dan has given us a ping. Let us then give him one ping back. These pings (his and ours) may be warnings, threats of imminent attack, pleas for understanding, or attempts at communication across the gulf of a vast, dense ocean which prevents any other way of determining real meaning. But in any case let us play a game, starting with the scenario he has given us:

“The disarmament process would begin after the initial three-month amnesty. Special squads of police would be formed and trained to carry out the work. Then, on a random basis to permit no advance warning, city blocks and stretches of suburban and rural areas would be cordoned off and searches carried out in every business, dwelling, and empty building.”

Our modest counter-proposal posits the following:

1. Like the American Revolution, one third of populace will side with the King, one third with the opposition and one third will blow with the wind and take what comes. Of the resistant third, less than a third of those will risk anything to give form to their beliefs, thus only about ten or so percent of the population, roughly 30 million citizens, will actively support the folks who will engage Dan’s “special squads”. (You know the Nazis called their special squads “Einsatzgruppen.”) In the Revolution, the active combatants, Continentals and militia, only amounted to 3% of the population. That would be about 10 million anti-confiscation guerrillas. Alternatively, we could use 10% of American gun owners as a good rule of thumb, and that would be just 8.5 million. But let’s make it even tougher on ourselves. Let us say for the sake of argument that as a result of liberal media propaganda and the cumulative deleterious effect of liberal government schools, just one percent of American gun owners would fall into the “cold dead hands” category: that’s a mere 850 thousand. These would be the hard core– the men and women who know how to kill at range, and who, with their scoped .30-06 deer rifles can out-range and out-shoot the M16 rifles and 9mm submachine guns of Dan’s American Einsatzgruppen.

2. Unlike the American Revolution, the civil war will reflect the coarsening of the rules of war and will look more like Iraq or Bosnia. The war would certainly extend to those whose direct and support it– civilian or not– as they are primary targets, far more so than the foot soldiers of Ambassador Dan’s Einsatzgruppen. Bill Clinton extended our own rules of war in the Kosovo intervention to include the news media and other propagandists as legitimate targets. Under these rules, Ambassador Dan and his anti-gun ilk would all be dead men. But, this is just a hypothetical word representation of a video game of Simpson’s fictional fascist future, so they need not be afraid just yet.

3. The war would not end until one vision of America or the other won. It would be war to the knife and knife to the hilt. The 850,000 traditional Americans would be determined to take as many of the Einsatzgruppen, their commanders and controllers with them as possible. And it would be far greater than a one-to-one ratio. The fanaticism that the liberals have always imputed to us, would in the event, become real and deadly. If Ambassador Dan’s future fascists do win, it will be a Pyrrhic victory that would, for destruction and casualties, dwarf all of America’s wars put together. Which, if you think of it, is a funny way to have a “safe” society.

“Kill all they send…”

Viet Minh Sergeant: “Do we take prisoners?”
Lt. Col. Nguyen Huu An: “No. Kill all they send… and they will stop coming.” — The Opening Scene of “We Were Soldiers”

What would be the casualties? God alone knows, but they would be horrific. How would the government prosecute such a policy with their own police and military honeycombed with potential “traitors”? Poorly, I suspect. How many of those soldiers and policemen that Ambassador Dan is counting on to disarm us would, in the event, turn their weapons on the “National Command Authority”? More than enough to make success for his future fascists problematic. And not even during the previous civil war of 1861-1865 did an American army attempt operations with armed opponents astride and within its own logistical tail. And it would be a WAR, make no mistake, not the sanitary “police action” of the scenario of Homer’s dumber brother. And how would the big bad boys of the ATF and FBI fare against committed freedom fighters? Even well-paid federal police bureaucrats just want to live until retirement. How long do you think they would last when team after team of them are shot down like dogs in the street, garroted in their sleep, poisoned in their mess halls, or found with their throats slit in guardposts, restrooms and bordellos? We will kill all you send, Ambassador Dan, until they stop coming.

“Bzzzzt. Boink. Beep. Game over. Please deposit 50 cents.”

So, thus ends the intellectual, hypothetical exercise posed by this mandarin class former Foreign Service professional turned newspaper expositor of tyrannical schemes. Let us disclaim that no treasonous, gun-grabbing editorialists were harmed in the crafting of this fictional counter-proposal. But of course, if he’s SERIOUS. . . . 😉

He proposes an environment worse than Nazi occupied Europe during the Second World War or the Soviet Union under Stalin. Before we get too excited, note that his proposal dates from 2007. Since then, it’s the gun grabbers who have lost ground.

Seems a bit much to post this long response complete with doomsday scenarios about American Civil war based on the views of one Raving Gun Control advocate.

I really doubt that the majority of Gun Control advocates really want to see squads of Jack Booted thugs going house to house Nazi style. They want more screening, more restrictions on certain types of military style weapons etc etc. To their minds these are reasonable restrictions. I dont agree with what they want, but Mr. Dan is way off reservation and is accompanied only but a few other nutters like maybe Josh Sugarman and Carolyn McCarthy. Dan Simpson just happens to have a big microphone.

From the way he seems to present his scenario it would be Completely Unconstitutional and illegal. Let us count the ways:
1. Violates 2nd Amendment. Right to Keep and Bear arms.
2. Violates Amendment 4 Search and Seizure.
3. Violates Amendment 5 Trial and Punishment, Compensation for Takings.
4. Violates Amendment 6 Right to Speedy Trial, Confrontation of Witnesses.

Mr. Dan Simpson has, by means of signing his name to this kind of drivel, demonstrated for the world that he is an idiot who does not believe in Rule of Law.

I’m not afraid of typicak anti-gunners because they really are after the types of (completely un)reasonable restrictions you mentioned. But just remember that behind them are shadowy statices steering their views. Once these “reasonable” restrictions happen, these figures will just manipulate the anti-gun portion of the population into believing that the next round is reasonable and the next and the next. Until there is nothing more to take. Then the real fun begins as we kiss the rest of our rights bye bye.

I think you’re wrong. They WANT to do it, they just know they shouldn’t say so out loud. For now, they just want restrictions. But gun control never ends with mere restrictions. Eventually, they will push for full legal ban, and the squads come out.

It’s impossible to articulate how angry this type of proposal makes me. It’s not just about firearms, this type of mindset, let alone behavior voids any legitimacy for the government that would undertake it. If the government were to actually take this step, then all bets are off, the social contract is null and void.

If such a scenario ever plays out then I think America will be aggressively attacked by other enemies from within and without taking advantage of chaos. In such an event, economic side effects will occur from confidence in the stock markets dropping with investors going to gold and overseas (the USD/FRN loosing even more buying power thus increasing inflation, unemployment would increase, etc.). A ripple effect would occur from gun related businesses closing (laying off workers) to the relatives and friends of imprisoned gun owners becoming deeply angered with government. Even non-gun owners would become enraged at the police state tactics of frisking grandma on the street.

If government ever goes confiscation, I think they’ll do it slowly: first going after the .50 cal sniper rifles, then AR/AK platforms, later on all handguns or just the semi-autos, etc. Another scenario is that government will not aggressively go after gun owners with force: the USG could pass laws ordering banks to close accounts, no credit card use, no access to utilities, refuse to renew professional licenses, etc of gun owners until they voluntarily turn in their guns.

“Even non-gun owners would become enraged at the police state tactics of frisking grandma on the street.”

Hardly anyone seems the slightest bit disturbed at the frisking of grandma at the airport… why would this be different?

It will happen slowly, as you said. They’ve already been doing it slowly for years and now most Americans have been conditioned to accept whatever injustice is thrust upon them in the name of “safety.”

Good point about grandma being frisked by TSA and there not being a reaction or much of one. There may an unknown line to some or many when that frisking, calls for “Papers!” on the street, home inspections, mass arrests, etc goes too far. Beliefs and attitudes can change and evolve over time. If it happens time will tell.

If gubbermint ever gets so embolden to go overtly confiscation then I suspect other non-gun related restrictions, liberties, etc will be under attack ie new limits to freedom of speech such as this blog, etc. Home schooling might get banned. The current generation of sheeple may not rise up against government yet the next might or might not.

True enough that the sheeple have been conditioned to accept whatever indignities and injustice is thrust upon them.

“In such an event, economic side effects will occur from confidence in the stock markets dropping with investors going to gold and overseas (the USD/FRN loosing even more buying power thus increasing inflation, unemployment would increase, etc.)”

You ARE reading the news, right? All of that has been happening for years. I believe American applications to renounce citizenship are up 800% over the last five years, or so.

I not only read the news I read history. I have profited from it by understanding trends and that is why I cashed out of the stock market in the Fall of 2007 and bought again in December 2008. Sure, of course it has been happening for years and ratcheting it up will cause those things I mentioned to go further.

“Special squads of police would be formed and trained to carry out the work.”

A very unlikley scenario. If it does happen, thats when the revolution begins. A society can never allow itself to be disarmed. Those “special” police would be the first to find out what the Second Amendment is really all about.

The great thing about Dan Simpson’s scenario is that he’s right — it’s the only way that the American public could be disarmed. Think about it. If it would take special squads of super-Nazis, draconian penalties and disarming grandma to grab the guns, I think we’re safe. Because first of all, America wouldn’t do that. And second of all, if America did do that, there would be a mountain of dead super-Nazis.

Sign me up Ralph. I’ve got enough friends that I think I could put together, at the very least, a good platoon sized unit.

A lot of people say that Massachusetts is the cradle, and the grave, of liberty. I know a fair amount of folks that would beg to differ. If push ever came to shove, they’d aim to see that the latter was a truly grave miscalculation on the part of the would be tyrants.

Thanks LS. We know there a plenty of good and wise folks here in the Commonwealth that share an understanding of the fundamentals and essentials of liberty. We may be in the minority but we’re strong, tenacious and motivated. We’ve lost many battles but I’m still confident that we will win the war.

On the other hand, I’ve been told by a member of King County SWAT that he and other members he’s talked to would flatly refuse to participate in any confiscation scheme. It makes me wonder how many other LEOs and military personnel feel the same way.

Sorry, but I won’t believe it until I see it. We’ve seen our police / federal agents / military do far too many immoral and unconstitutional things (including killing unarmed US citizens) and hide behind the excuse of “just following orders”.

The government can suspend the constitution; they did it for legal Japanese-born citizens in the 40’s during WWII, and rounded them up into internment camps. That doesn’t mean I think it’s fair; Rights aren’t rights if they can be “suspended” (read: taken away). The government needs to stop the double-speak regarding rights, and just say what they mean/mean what they say.

I’m probably about as liberal as they come, but I still don’t get the push from the left for arms control. Removing any element in high demand only creates a black market; banning arms will only make law-abiding citizens easy targets, while the individuals and groups it is meant to control will just smuggle arms instead. If every citizen of legal age carried a concealed weapon, I personally believe that violence would decrease, since the shadier characters in our society would easily be outnumbered in a firefight. Why would you steal a little old lady’s purse if you thought she might have a saturday night special in her garter and the skill to peg you with it at 25 yards?

Besides, what happens if the government turns police state, completely against its people? By social contract theory – on which our primary founding documents were based – it is the right and responsibility of the people to rise up against a government that ceases to serve them. Banning arms would strip a basic human right, and I will never support it.

I feel the same way about licensing rifles. My cousin is a Corporal in the Coast Guard, and when he transferred to the base in Massachusetts, he was required to take a “basic firearms” class in order to own his civilian hunting rifles – despite having fired numerous large-caliber automatic ship weapons as a part of his job. The military didn’t require it – the state did. The fact that he showed up in uniform carrying his sidearm for the test and the instructor subsequently waived the training is irrelevant, as far as I’m concerned.

If any of this ever came to pass, I’m sure Mexico would welcome me and my .223…

The disarmament lobby ain’t dumb.They realize that disarming a population can never be effectively done by force in one sitting.A country is disarmed by gradual and unnoticed conditioning of its voting base.When the UK and Austrailia disarmed,the voters in those countries supported the gun banners with open arms.By the time the amnesties started up,the jig was already over for the armed citizens.

In order for such a plan to work, a complete information black-out would have to occur. The TV, Radio, Internet, and all other forms(Non-Mil or Police)n would all have to shut down. Otherwise, the news would spread like wild fire and a new civil war would erupt. With between 85 to 133,000,000 civilian gun owners in America, Cops and Military personnel changing sides, it would get ugly for the Fascists.

I have laid out these Numbers before: U.S. Military- 1.2 to 1.5 million; Federal,State, and local PD-750 to 850,00; American Gun Owners 85to 133,000,000 million. They would need to put together a sizeable force to collect 300+ million guns!

Uhm.. Well.. I don’t even know where to start. My jaw is still on my keyboard from reading this man’s words.
He truly does scare the heck out of me for his line of thinking. Yes it is over the top, do I think we will see some expanded ATF raids on private homes to disarm us, no.
But the fact is, like in the article, this is a ping. It is showing the face of the anti-gun groups and what their ultimate goal is.
As many have pointed out I don’t think overnight you get to a police state, but having said that, we are seeing the changes before our very eyes. Many anti-gun states are trying to put more and more restrictions, on who can carry and who can’t. The fact in CA it costs $400 or more just to apply is silly. I could see if you were required to do training and after you filed your permit the $400 wen to that ok fine. Yes I know there are those that don’t even want that but I am just saying. You spend all this money and still can be denied, this forces many, even myself from even trying. Then just because I am in California, there are many guns I can’t own. Even ones that might be considered legal but because the gun manufacturers don’t pay up and submit the guns that are not on the list. This alone could be looked at as extortion and prejudice. If the band list keeps growing or the manufacturers stop even wanting to submit firearms for approval then our options become less and less. At what point do you say enough is enough?

I will leave you with Thomas Jefferson. In a dooms day scenario such as the article above it would be time to displace the current government in order to ensure our freedoms and maintain the validity of the United States.
“God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion.
The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is
wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts
they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions,
it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. …
And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not
warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of
resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as
to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost
in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from
time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
It is its natural manure.”

The Gun Abolitionists have failed to win the propaganda war for the hearts and minds of the American people. Leadership in America on Gun Abolition has failed to set a message and an example that resonates with the majority. The USG has a massive and expensive military machine, and uses it. The USG has failed to secure our southern border. The US Court System is corrupt and not a place of Justice: criminals get off and good people are treated cruelly. Hollywood celebrities call for gun abolition yet play with guns in their films so to get paid million$ and even own guns.

850,000 is certainly a low estimate for one simple reason, the author fails to take into account the response of the criminal element in his scenario, specifically organized crime. These theoretical thugs might simply be looking for guns, but house to house sweeps are going to uncover much worse crimes, and when backed into a corner it’s the criminals who would respond first and with greatest effect in any such theoretical enaction of unannounced sweeps. We see that kind of thing historically in nearly every major war, the existing criminal element already has the logistical and communication network to fight a guerilla war, and they end up forming the backbone of more honest “freedom fighters” by providing them with money, documents, clandestine communications and safe havens.
Anyone who would be unwilling to work with a criminal element when besieged by a tyrannical government doesn’t understand the realities of war at all. Still some people would be unwilling to work hand in hand with murders and thieves (ignoring the fact that they’ve willingly become so themselves) and even if we cut the 850,000 number in half to 425,000 the money material and manpower that the criminal element would provide much more willingly than people might think (at least if you ascribe to the axiom that history repeats itself) would more than outweigh the losses.
So in this scenario there would be about 425,000 disorganized individuals fighting against the government piecemeal while on the other side there would most likely be as many as 1.5 million well armed and well organized citizens and criminals resisting in an effective and coordinated manner.
But wait!!! This number precludes the so-called “defense contractors” a.k.a. (dare I say it?) Mercenaries. By definition these individuals will fight on both sides, but really they’ll be much more essential to the government because once the lead starts flying even if posse commitatus (which prevents american armed forces members from operating on U.S. soil in a military or law enforcement role except in times of “national emergency) were revoked a state of emergency declared and troops mobilized to keep the peace the wouldn’t be able to do a damn thing in time thanks to the beaureucratic nature of our goverment.
Senators would retreat and washington as well as most state and local government centers would fall within days much more quickly than troops could be redeployed from overseas in order to prevent such a thing.

Just consider that and you’ll see that you have nothing to worry about this time if the government were to provoke a civil war, since there would be no government created to oppose the federal government but rather simply a group of citizens rapidly, violently and with little forethought or planning enacting a regime change. If the federal government were to provoke an armed response by a disparate and “disorganized” group of civilians it wouldn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell, another thing that history should have taught us is that once the desire for a “regime change” is provoked in a large enough portion of the population relatively simultaneously then the existing government is, pardon my vernacular parlance here, FUCKED.

So crack a beer, smile like an idiot and (theoretically) wait for the government to shoot itself in the foot.

While nothing surprises me anymore, it is astonishing that this kind of tyrannical thought still exists in this day and age. But Simpson actually does us a favor by having the shameless nerve to speak his mind publicly. For anyone who thinks that the 2nd Amendment is some sort of 18th Century anachronism, what more proof is needed that it is not? Syria demonstrates that tyranny is timeless and Simpson shows that tyrannical thought lives on even in the most modern, educated, enlightened and free society in history.

Thank the Founders for the 2nd Amendment and for the 1st Amendment to show us the need.

When I see this coming, I’ll either join the Pennsylvania Volunteers or organize it myself. I may be an old fat slightly crippled white guy, but I will not live in a country as described by a-hole Simpson without fighting to my last breath to stop it.